


Dresses and Cakes

by eveningstar



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 02:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16150811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eveningstar/pseuds/eveningstar
Summary: Yuki, Juza and being yourself.





	Dresses and Cakes

**Author's Note:**

> From the Full Bloom Fan Letters exchange. (I kept nagging other people to post theirs and then never posted my own...)

Yuki watched with poorly concealed disgust as Juza smothered yet more jam on a piece of thick white toast that already had so much it was about to start running off the edges. Apparently realising this too late, he awkwardly tried to bite it while holding it perfectly horizontal, which was definitely going to result in jam on his nose.

"You're going to get that everywhere," Yuki informed him, chin resting on one hand.

The older boy must have been too absorbed in his breakfast to register Yuki's presence, something which Yuki found frankly offensive and therefore felt it was entirely deserved when Juza started and a large glob of jam slid down his hand.

"I told you so."

Yuki's gaze hardened when Juza looked at him warily.

"Don't you dare lick it off."

Juza looked guilty and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like he was trying to blame Yuki for this inevitable outcome rather than his own lack of restraint where sugar was concerned, but Yuki graciously let it slide.

"Akigumi doesn't have rehearsal today, right?"

Juza nodded as he wiped his hand clean, then looked sadly at the tissue, obviously regretting the waste of jam - was he considering eating the tissue? Honestly, was it so much to ask that just one of the nineteen men Yuki lived with occasionally act like something resembling a normal human?

"Do you have work?"

Juza shook his head.

"Then what are you doing today?" Yuki had learnt from watching Omi and Muku that this was the only way to get the information you needed out of the template yankee. If you didn't draw it out bit by bit, you'd get a shrug and a grunt and the end of the conversation.

"I'm going to catch up on uni reading -"

"Wrong. You're coming shopping with me."

Juza looked surprised and confused - probably trying to remember if this was a conversation that had already happened, and, in classic Hyodo-Sakisaka Family style, probably about to starting beating himself up mentally for having forgotten. Yuki rolled his eyes.

"There's a designer fabric store on the other side of town that's having a closing down sale. They announced it last night. I need someone to carry my bags."

"But I really need to..." Juza trailed off apologetically. There was no reason he should feel bad about turning down a demand from a boy three years younger than him that he give up his Saturday to go across town to a place he had zero interest in and be put to work, and yet he seemed to. Yuki almost felt a little guilty for taking advantage of him - almost.

To be honest, Yuki suspected that Juza still half thought of him as a girl. Given the stories he had heard from Taichi during rehearsals for Stranger, it was hardly a stretch to imagine that that he assumed that anyone in a skirt was a girl, and the way he always seemed slightly intimidated and confused by Yuki supported this suspicion. The template yankee might be awkward and blunt, but he was surprisingly well-mannered and probably had all kinds of old-fashioned ideas about how girls should be treated, and Yuki could just imagine how those ideas clashed against his desire not to offend Yuki by treating him like a girl, causing him all sorts of anguish.

Normally Yuki would be annoyed by anyone thinking of him as a girl at all, but somehow, coming from the template yankee it was almost charming.

"And there's a cafe next to it that's having an all you can eat sakura sweets festival that finishes tomorrow."

Juza nearly dropped his toast.

"There's sakura chiffon cake, sakura mont blanc, sakura macarons, sakura pudding, sakura roll cake - but with all that pink, I bet it would be pretty awkward for a large university student to head in there by himself."

Yuki smiled and swung his feet under the chair as Juza scowled at the injustice of it all. He knew he really shouldn’t be adding to the older boy’s complex about going to cafes alone, but, well, those bags were going to be heavy.

"Of course, after all that shopping, I dare say I'll be looking for a place to sit down and have a drink, maybe even a bit of cake, and, you know, I'd probably fit right in with all those cute cakes and things... I wouldn't mind company, but if you're busy -"

"What time are we leaving?"

"I can't understand why the neo yankee calls you stupid," he said with a smile. "I'll go and get ready. See you at the entrance at nine."

\--

Soon after nine, they boarded the train, which was surprisingly crowded for a Saturday morning. When a seat opened up, Juza blocked a high school student from taking it with surprising grace and nodded for Yuki to take it.

“I’m fine,” he said. “You can sit.”

“Your shoes,” Juza said, looking down at the footwear in question.

“What?”

“They’re - it’s tiring, right? My mom always says, when she wears those...”

Yuki looked down at his feet - he was wearing a pair of white kitten heels, low enough that he would be able to move quickly around the fabric store, but admittedly a little higher than his usual brown shoes. Well, there was no harm in resting his feet before the shopping marathon to come, so he took the seat, rolling his eyes to make sure the template yankee knew what he thought of the idea that these heels were enough to tire him.

It was exactly the sort of thing that made Yuki suspicious - was he giving up the seat out of some gentlemanly instinct, or out of real concern for Yuki’s heeled feet? Or just because he’d do it for any of the company members, always putting himself last?

At any rate, it would have been much easier to have a conversation if Juza had been the one to take the seat, Yuki thought, as Juza awkwardly leaned down, trying to close the distance between them so they could talk without disturbing the other passengers.

"What are you looking for?"

"I don't have anything I'm particularly looking for - I've already bought the material for Harugumi's costumes - but this is too good of an opportunity to pass up. Even the money-obsessed yakuza agreed. But," Yuki said, tapping his chin, "Villager C mentioned wanting to do something with European aristocrats for Fuyugumi, so if we can see some rich fabrics that would suit them, some dark jewel tones..."

If Villager C could be convinced to write Azu-nee into a ball gown... deep purple under black lace... ribbons... his hair up in curls... maybe a hint of periwinkle in the trim?

"Rich..." Juza blinked, obviously not seeing the same visions as Yuki. "As in, expensive? I thought - "

Yuki sighed and rolled his eyes.

"You just carry the fabric rolls, okay?"

When they arrived at the fabric store, Yuki was ready for battle - and so were the other customers, it seemed. As they waited for the doors to open, he eyed up the competition - a girl with razor sharp electric blue bangs, probably a university design student, with nails she seemed all too ready to use, an old lady with fire in her eyes and similar readiness to wield her walking stick - Yuki began to regret not bringing a weapon of his own. He tugged on Juza's sleeve and whispered in his ear, "I hope you don't have any stupid resistance to punching girls, because I might need you to."

Juza looked around him uncomfortably, but when the university student glared at him, he reflexively glared back and the girl looked away with a start. Yuki smiled smugly. He had definitely chosen the right company today.

The doors opened and Yuki ran, pulling the yankee behind him by the hand, and immediately piling rolls of fabric into his arms - this beat-up leather could be used in all kinds of settings, this midnight blue would look amazing on the fake elite's pale (pasty) skin, okay, he has no idea what he's going to use that brocade for but it's a steal at that price, oh and that sunflower print would make a cute summer dress for himself (and maybe if there's enough left over he'll make the ponkotsu a hat band or something out of it, if he's lucky)...

Was this what heaven felt like? The thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of snatching the last roll away from the enemy (as he'd come to think of his fellow shoppers), the anticipation of all the things he would make - truly an excellent way to spend a Saturday.

All too soon, in Yuki's opinion, albeit possibly not Juza's, judging by the look on his face, they hit the yakuza's budget and the extent of Yuki's own pocket money. After weighing the template yankee down with enough fabric to clothe the whole company for a month, Yuki duly led him to his reward.

The cafe had obviously been designed with a semi-rococo image in mind, and even if it wasn't perfectly Yuki's style - he preferred a little more pop cute, brighter colours, not so much pastel - it wasn't displeasing to his eye, and there was a plate of small dome cakes decorated to look like pink rabbits that was very much his aesthetic. He was still riding high from the success of his shopping trip and couldn't help but feel a little love for the world. He didn't even make a caustic remark about the amount of sugar contained in the mountain of pink sweets on the template yankee's plate, but smiled at him indulgently as his eyes lit up and he all but melted around a spoonful of sakura pudding. It was kind of cute, actually - Yuki could easily imagine making a companion for his brown bear with narrowed eyes but a dreamy smile, always pictured with cake in hand.

"It's good that you stopped trying to hide the fact that you like sweets," he said, as though he had made up his mind then and there. "Why did you even bother in the first place?"

"Huh? I mean… It doesn’t exactly suit me, does it? A huge scary-looking thing like me sitting down to pink cupcakes..." He looked down at his plate guiltily, like he'd done a disservice to his beloved sweets. Yuki wanted to shake him.

"So?"

"What?"

"So? What does it matter if it doesn't suit you? Why do you care what people think, when you could hospitalise them with one hand tied behind your back?"

Juza scowled.

"I don't do that anymore."

"What?" Yuki smiled cheekily. "Care what people think or hospitalise them?"

Juza looked surprised for a moment, then barked a laugh. It had been obvious when he first arrived at Mankai that he wasn’t used to teasing that wasn’t a prelude to a fight, and didn’t know how to recognise or respond to friendly ribbing. He’d changed a lot since then, Yuki had to admit. For one thing, there was no way he could have imagined him as a teddy bear a year ago.

“Both.” Juza said, smiling - something else Yuki would have been hard pressed to imagine a year ago - though a wistful look entered his eyes. "Well, I try for both, but one's easier than the other..."

Yuki sighed.

“Yeah, I know.”

For all he put on a good front, it was a lie to say that the things the boys at school said, the words they called him didn’t hurt, to say that he had never doubted himself, never considered putting away his dresses and toys and trying to fit in… Not to mention the way he was always on his guard, even around people who he knew meant no harm, like the template yankee, for any hint of being treated like a girl.

"How do you do it?" Juza asked, with genuine curiosity.

"Me?” Yuki shrugged. “Practice, I guess. I liked cute things before anyone told me not to, and by the time they did I refused to listen."

"You make it sound so easy. I wish I could have just... not listened,” said Juza. He slumped in his chair, the poor posture the director had worked so hard to fix coming back, as though trying (uselessly) to make himself smaller, curling in on himself to hide from the world. His regret was obvious, and Yuki knew that making light of his own struggles would only make Juza blame himself more.

“Well, I knew they were wrong. And I hated them for being wrong. I hated every single one of them so much. That made it easier. There was no way I could let myself give in to people I hated that much.”

Maybe if things had been different, Yuki thought, he would have ended up like Juza. It’s not like he hadn’t wanted to pummel the boys at school into the ground, but that was never an option for him and his delicate frame, so he’d trained his tongue to be just as dangerous as Juza’s fists.

“Anyway. I think what you did was much harder. Like I said, I’ve been practicing for years, but you spent most of your life letting yourself become exactly what they thought you were. Then one day you walked into the Akigumi auditions and stopped being that person. You finally started being yourself. Except when it came to sweets, for some reason.”

Juza’s ears pinked at the praise, but he shrugged off the compliments and the teasing.

"If I got better at acting, people would stop laughing at me, but nothing stops a guy with a face like mine eating alone in a place like this from being funny."

"Yeah,” Yuki replied, rolling his eyes, “and to some people, nothing is going to stop a boy in a skirt from being funny, no matter how well I wear it - and I wear it very well - but if I let that stop me from wearing what I want to, it means those people win. Come on, didn't they say you were the strongest at your school? Are you really going to let yourself lose to those kind of douchebags?"

"I'm starting to think I'm not strong at all compared to you.” Juza met Yuki’s gaze. “Muku's always saying that you're the most manly guy in the whole company, but I don't think I ever realised how right he was."

Yuki smiled and sipped his sakura tea delicately. He bat his eyelashes and raised his voice to the tone he took for female roles. "Just because I'm so pretty?"

He set the tea down and lowered his voice again. "Even after all this time, you still think of me as a girl sometimes, don't you?"

Juza looked away, which was answer enough. "Sorry."

Yuki scowled, but there was no real malice in it.

"You should stop that."

Juza grunted in agreement and Yuki sighed dramatically.

"Well, I guess while you're learning to be as cool and manly as I am, I'll come with you to these kinds of cafes - but if you're going to think of me as a girl, then you can treat me like one and pay for me."

Juza smiled again.

"Yeah, that sounds fair."


End file.
